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MIAMI, July 6 (AP) – Donald Trump’s valet faced arraignment Thursday on charges of helping the former president withhold classified documents from federal authorities.
Walt Nauta smiled at reporters upon his arrival but said nothing.
In June, Nota was indicted along with Trump on 38 counts of mishandling classified documents. He is on trial before a federal judge in Miami and is expected to plead not guilty.
This has happened twice before, but he has struggled to hire a Florida-licensed attorney, and one of his court appearances has been delayed by travel issues.
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Before the arraignment, Nota hired Sasha Dadan, a criminal defense attorney and former public defender whose main law firm is in Fort Pierce, and the judge who will be hearing the case, according to a person familiar with the matter. stationed there. Requested anonymity before appearing in court.
Trump pleaded not guilty to charges of knowingly withholding national defense information during his trial on June 13. But the day of Nota’s arraignment was postponed because of his lawyer’s circumstances, and last week his scheduled flight from New Jersey was canceled and the arraignment was postponed again.
The indictment, filed by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors, accuses Notah of conspiring with Trump to conceal the records that the former president took from the White House after his term ended in January 2021.
Prosecutors allege that Nota, at the direction of the former president, moved boxes of documents marked classified so they would not be discovered by Trump lawyers tasked with searching the home for classified records and returning them to the government.
That led the Justice Department to falsely claim that it had conducted a “serious search” of classified documents and that all documents in response to the subpoena had been returned, prosecutors said.
Notah, a Navy veteran, served as Trump’s valet delivering Diet Cokes at the White House before joining Trump as a personal assistant at Mar-a-Lago. He has been by Trump’s side frequently, including traveling with Trump’s motorcade to a Miami courthouse earlier this month and later accompanying him to the city’s famed Cuban restaurant, Versailles, where he helped channel eagerness for a photo with the former president supporters. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a syndicated news feed, the latest staff may not have modified or edited the body of content)
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